I wasn’t supposed to remember who I was.
But the dreams came anyway.

They came like waves — folding over me, whispering in isiZulu, speaking of things I’d forgotten... or tried to forget. In my small room in Ezakheni, the world felt normal. Too normal. But something inside me was waking. Something ancient. Something true.

They call me “The Man Who Once Lived.”
A name I don’t remember choosing — but one that follows me like a shadow.

It started with the voice of a woman calling me mntanami… then visions, strange lights behind my eyes, and colors that don’t exist in this world. Soon, the border between dreams and waking began to dissolve. My reflection started looking back at me like it knew secrets I didn’t. I thought I was losing my mind — until Ayanda showed me otherwise.

She taught me what they don’t tell you: that the crown chakra isn’t above your head, it’s in the back of your brain — the medulla oblongata — and that much of what the world calls “spiritual” has been distorted to keep us asleep.

Now, the dreams are growing stronger.
The voice in the water is louder.
And the world I thought I knew is unraveling.

Forgotten gods stir beneath the soil. The air thickens with old magic. Rain falls backward. Time twists. And somewhere beyond this waking world, a war is being fought — one that remembers me, even if I don’t remember it.

I’m not just hearing a call.
I am the call.

The kettle screamed on the stove, shaking slightly from years of hard use. I turned it off and poured the boiling water into the enamel basin, watching steam rise like restless spirits. My mother had taught me this ritual—cleansing the body before speaking to the ancestors. Even now, after her death, I followed it with trembling reverence.


Last night, I was underwater again—but deeper this time. And something called me by a name I didn't recognize. A name that didn't belong to the world I knew.


The whisper came in isiZulu, but it wasn't the language that frightened me—it was the authority behind it. Like the voice was speaking through time itself.


I lit the impepho, the sacred herb, letting the smoke curl through the air as I sat cross-legged on the woven mat. The silence was thick.


I turned my head sharply, heart thudding.


I needed answers. And I knew only one place to go—Gogo Nomusa, the oldest sangoma in our section of Ezakheni. She was said to have lived through three generations of ancestors—and if anyone could explain what was happening to me, it was her.


By midday, I stood outside her compound. A rusted gate creaked open before I even knocked, like it had been expecting me. Chickens scattered. A wind chime of bones knocked against each other gently in the breeze.


Gogo Nomusa sat in the shadows, wrapped in red and white beads. Her eyes were like dried figs—wrinkled and deep, but seeing too much.


She didn't greet me in words. She just pointed to the ground before her. I sat.


"You are not sick," she finally rasped. "You are remembering."


She took a pinch of snuff, closed her eyes, and spoke like she was pulling something out of the dirt.


"Not all souls are new. Some return because their work was not finished. You... are not just a boy. You are a seed that was once a tree. And now the tree grows again."


She smiled, toothless but strong. "You will. When the seventh moon rises, you must go to the mountain. There, the sky will speak, and the ancestors will show you your true name."


I stood outside, bare feet on cold earth, staring at the moon.


Like something old was stirring in my blood.


Chapter 3 - Chapter 3: The Bones Remember